One step back is not a step away

Hello, this is the Hungarian girl who didn’t receive her Latvian chocolate. Just because of the lack of willpower of my friend. Do I judge her? Not at all, I keep smiling on this lovely story! First of all because it is so refreshing to hear the sincerity about all of it, secondly because everyone is facing issues with his or her willpower. And I am not an exception neither. Let me share with you my biggest willpower-challenge.

I am pretty sure you know the situation when you have many exams at university but you are only procrastinating studying. Your house is shining from cleanliness, as never. You clean the windows every Sunday. You iron your clothes (even if you don’t do it at all in a „normal” period). You are super-updated (like minute by minute) with news of the world – because it is essential, of course. You keep watching on new episodes of EVERY TV-series – just not to loose track. You respond to your FB messages in one second – yes, you don’t have choice, it is friend’s rule number 1. So, everyone has some creative procrastinating strategy.

My one was not a too healthy one. I was cooking and baking to & with my boyfriend, all the time. And of course we ate everything what I made – I should have been a worse cook, I know. In half a year it ended up, obviously, in 10 plus kilos on my body. I felt awful. I wanted to change the situation, but didn’t want enough, it seems so. This was 4 years before. It took me 3 years to realize that if I want to change anything, it is not enough to say that, „yeah it would be good, but….; I wanna do it, but…; I will do it, but…”. I kept saying to myself that I never had willpower, and I will fail for sure if I start a diet or something like that.

However one day I woke up with some unbelievable strength in my mind! I don’t have any particular explanation for that, but I felt myself terribly strong! Okay, I have to admit that the mirror was extremely unfriendly with me that day, which was the last drop in the glass. In the glass that I have just simply ignored before that. In my glass of ignorance. And yeah, it was my lucky day, since I found my support system: a friend of mine has just enrolled in a school of fitness & training. We immediately had a deal that we’ll support each other: I was supporting him by giving him possibility to practice his knowledge while he was supporting me (mostly in a professional way) to reach my goal, which was of course getting rid of some unnecessary kilos. So, win-win! But how come I was able to start it finally?How come I was able to say no to procrastinating? How come I was able to stop finding excuses?

As the most stable pillar of all, I had to find a really really strong inner motivation. An inner motivation which can/could really lead me to success. But you know what? Usually when you decide to change something let’s say big, the result doesn’t come the next morning, neither the next Monday. You have to believe in your aim, in your action and most importantly, in yourself. That you can do, you are capable of doing it. That limits do exist only in your mind. Which sounds so easy-cheesy, but it is extremely hard! So when after 2 months of hard work, you still don’t see what you want, you can really get tired of it, you can get disappointed, maybe mad as hell. So was I!

And here we come to my secondmost stable pillar of the whole process: support system! I don’t deny, it was a roller coaster! I had ups & downs. Several downs. But I realized it quite fast, how to handle them. I surrounded myself with people with similar motivations to mine. I called my friends when I was down, the ones who were supporting me. I was in daily contact with my trainer friend, who had also the function of a mentor in this process. I started to register my successes first on a weekly, then on daily bases. It was so incredibly good to look back at some points! I think this was the most important for me, to find & build a proper, well-working support system.

Another thing that helped me, that I totally got rid of the „Stop system” and lived only with the „Go system” of my brain. What does it mean? Okay, I love sweets. I love bread. I love beer! But I had to stop them all. Was it difficult? YES! In the first some days or weeks definitely. But after a short while, I realized that actually what can „go”, is a huge variety of things! Things for example I haven’t eaten before. I haven’t even known about them… I suddenly also found some very interesting and highly enjoyable sports to do. I was able to find and live with the joy (smaller & bigger) which my new lifestyle gave me. After some months of hard work (which slowly seemed not a work, but more like a default & automatic something) I started to see the desired results. And here I am not talking about only kilos, this I consider only a very pleasant side effect of the process, but about the quality how I lived. The way how I treated myself. I was very satisfied, proud and happy. And the things I changed to, were seemed to be obvious & essential part of my life.

That is why I was super-surprised and very disappointed in myself when I had a huge change in my life and moved to another country, moved to live another life. This totally ruined my daily, weekly and overall routine somehow. My willpower seemed to be not strong enough. I always found excuses again and again.Have I failed? I would say so. For a short while. But since after 2 months I found my way back, now I say that no, not at all – it was definitely not a failure. I just had a bigger down. My well-built support system was not there with me anymore. At least not in that way I got used to it. I had to find my way to shape it to the new conditions. Which again was not easy, but was not impossible at all.

Now I am really back, I feel my willpower strong enough to proceed well. Do I think I will never have downs or breaks again? Not at all! But I am pretty sure, that now that my mind is trained by this challenge, it will be much easier to handle it and overcome with it.And I already know: one step back is not a step away.